TANDY, concerning Tandy Hard

UNTIL SHE WAS seven years old she lived in an old
unpainted house on an unused road that led off
Trunion Pike. Her father gave her but little attention
and her mother was dead. The father spent his time
talking and thinking of religion. He proclaimed himself
an agnostic and was so absorbed in destroying
the ideas of God that had crept into the minds of
his neighbors that he never saw God manifesting
himself in the little child that, half forgotten, lived
here and there on the bounty of her dead mother's
relatives.

A stranger came to Winesburg and saw in the
child what the father did not see. He was a tall, red-haired
young man who was almost always drunk.
Sometimes he sat in a chair before the New Willard
House with Tom Hard, the father. As Tom talked,
declaring there could be no God, the stranger smiled
and winked at the bystanders. He and Tom became
friends and were much together.

The stranger was the son of a rich merchant of
Cleveland and had come to Winesburg on a mission.
He wanted to cure himself of the habit of drink, and
thought that by escaping from his city associates and
living in a rural community he would have a better
chance in the struggle with the appetite that was
destroying him.

His sojourn in Winesburg was not a success. The
dullness of the passing hours led to his drinking
harder than ever. But he did succeed in doing something.
He gave a name rich with meaning to Tom
Hard's daughter.

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One evening when he was recovering from a long
debauch the stranger came reeling along the main
street of the town. Tom Hard sat in a chair before
the New Willard House with his daughter, then a
child of five, on his knees. Beside him on the board
sidewalk sat young George Willard. The stranger
dropped into a chair beside them. His body shook
and when he tried to talk his voice trembled.

It was late evening and darkness lay over the
town and over the railroad that ran along the foot
of a little incline before the hotel. Somewhere in the
distance, off to the west, there was a prolonged blast
from the whistle of a passenger engine. A dog that
had been sleeping in the roadway arose and barked.
The stranger began to babble and made a prophecy
concerning the child that lay in the arms of the
agnostic.

"I came here to quit drinking," he said, and tears
began to run down his cheeks. He did not look at
Tom Hard, but leaned forward and stared into the
darkness as though seeing a vision. "I ran away to
the country to be cured, but I am not cured. There
is a reason." He turned to look at the child who sat
up very straight on her father's knee and returned
the look.

The stranger touched Tom Hard on the arm.
"Drink is not the only thing to which I am addicted,"
he said. "There is something else. I am a
lover and have not found my thing to love. That is
a big point if you know enough to realize what I
mean. It makes my destruction inevitable, you see.
There are few who understand that."